The Nose

Ivan Yakovlevich the barber slices into his breakfast loaf and finds a nose baked inside it, and he knows at once whose it is. Across Petersburg, Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov wakes to a smooth flat patch where his own nose used to sit, and by afternoon he has spotted the thing about town in in a plumed hat and a gold-braided uniform, stepping down from a carriage, three ranks his senior, praying in Kazan Cathedral with an air of the greatest piety.